Introducing: The Space Shuttle
To launch like a rocket and land like a plane. The space shuttle: A sci-fi dream that became reality and changed spaceflight forever. Told by the Nasa astronauts, engineers, scientists and support staff who made it happen.
Our multi award-winning podcast returns on 14 July 2025 with: 13 Minutes Presents: The Space Shuttle. Presented by space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock. She tells the story of triumph and tragedy, and the human story behind the technology and scientific endeavour.
A BBC Audio Science Unit production for the BBC World Service.
Season 3 theme music by Hans Zimmer and Christian Lundberg, and produced by Russell Emanuel, for Bleeding Fingers Music.
Archive: Mission audio and oral histories, Nasa History Office.
Listen and follow along
Transcript
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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12th of April, 1981,
Cape Canaveral, Florida.
A radically new spacecraft sits on the launch pad.
Unlike anything that had ever flown in space.
Every single system,
every piece of instrumentation, all of it, it was the first time anybody had ever seen any of that.
Two astronauts wait to be launched into space.
This is the boldest test flight in history.
We're going to fly this new rocket.
Never been flown before, and we got people on it.
We got inside of a minute to launch, and I said, John, I think we might really do it.
That was when my heart rate went up to around 130.
The multi-award-winning podcast returns.
13 minutes present.
The Space Shuttle.
The first space shuttle, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.
And it was like something being born.
This vehicle was saying, I'm alive, let me go.
I mean, we're just hooting and hollering and screaming and yelling for the sheer joy of what you were taking in.
What a view, what a view.
Glad you're enjoying.
I'm space scientist Maggie Adarin Pocock.
I grew up with the dream of one day becoming an astronaut.
And through my teenage years, I watched in awe the vehicle that took people into orbit and back to Earth.
This is the inside story of a sci-fi dream to revolutionize spaceflight.
Don't launch like a rocket and land like an airplane.
Told by the men and women who made it happen.
We had trained together for so long.
Their hopes, their dreams.
Inside Mission Control, it is a finely tuned machine, and I was getting to be a part of that.
Their triumphs and their tragedies.
It's a dangerous environment, a hostile environment, complex machine.
Things can go bad.
Counter, go with throttle-up.
The launch just didn't look right.
Obviously a major malfunction.
I know I was in shock and disbelief.
It's the story of the most complex flying machine ever built.
The Space Shuttle.
The new season of 13 Minutes.
And liftoff, liftoff of STS-7 and America's first women astronaut.
The shuttle was a marvelous vehicle.
We'll probably not see its equivalent anytime soon if we ever do.
I don't think there'll ever be a vehicle like the shuttle ever again.
Every flight of the shuttle was a miracle from the bbc world service 13 minutes presents the space shuttle released from the 14th of july 2025 the world's greatest autonolectric climb machine i'll tell you that it was super
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